When the Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations invited public comments on the Draft Misinformation, Disinformation, Hate Speech and Publication of Other Information (MDHI) Bill, 2025, the GIMPA Law School’s Department of Public Law and Governance seized the moment. What began as an academic exercise within the Law and Technology class quickly transformed into a model of civic scholarship a student-led, facultyguided review of a Bill that will shape the boundaries of Ghana’s digital democracy for decades to come.
Guided by the Head of Department, the students dissected the 80-plus sections of the draft line by line, benchmarking it against Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, international conventions such as the ICCPR, and continental standards under the African Charter and the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information. The resulting submission, filed officially by the School on Monday 10th November 2025, represents a call to protect society from disinformation without eroding the constitutional pillars of free expression, press independence, and civic participation.
At first glance, the MDHI Bill carries noble intent, indeed, it is meant to curb deliberate falsehoods, hate speech, and the reckless sharing of private or harmful content. Yet, as GIMPA’s team argues, the path to cleaner information cannot be created with vague powers, criminal overreach, and administrative censorship. “Truth cannot be protected by fear,” the submission notes, warning that, in its present form, the Bill risks turning public debate into an offence rather than a duty.
When Protection Becomes Control
The School’s analysis begins at the heart of the Bill which is its object clause. The stated aim to protect individuals from “disrepute, embarrassment or ridicule” may sound harmless, but in legal effect it authorises state intrusion into political commentary, satire, and investigative journalism. GIMPA’s submission recommends rewriting this clause to confine limitations strictly to serious, demonstrable harm to national security, public order, public health, or the rights and reputations of others, and only where measures are necessary and proportionate in a democratic society.
Equally troubling is the Bill’s approach to “false information.” Under sections 19 and 22, a person could be sanctioned merely for publishing information deemed “false or misleading,” even without intent or proof of harm. This, the School warns, “creates strict liability for speech” and invites arbitrary enforcement. Instead, the submission defines falsity as material inaccuracy and anchors liability on intent, recklessness, or negligent publication that causes serious harm, harm meaning verifiable violence, imminent threat to health, substantial economic loss, or interference with elections. By drawing this boundary, the School insists, the law would distinguish genuine disinformation from the everyday errors, opinions, and evolving truths that characterise a free marketplace of ideas.
GIMPA also challenges provisions that allow public institutions themselves to seek redress for disinformation. In a democracy, the School argues, the state is the most powerful speaker in society; allowing it to sue citizens for “official defamation” flips accountability on its head.
The submission proposes that government bodies should respond to criticism with counterspeech and correction, not coercive sanctions, except where demonstrably false statements imminently endanger life or public safety.
The Bill’s treatment of public-health emergencies and election periods also raises alarm. By reversing the burden of proof and enabling rapid takedown orders, it risks muting journalists, fact-checkers, and civic observers exactly when public scrutiny is most essential. GIMPA’s corrective proposal is precise: delete the burden shift, restore normal proof standards, and require that any removal or blocking of electoral content in the 21 days before voting be authorised only by a High Court order within 48 hours, on clear proof of intentional falsehood and imminent interference with results.
On hate speech, the School endorses a calibrated approach, essentially targeting only advocacy of discriminatory hatred that incites imminent violence, consistent with the Rabat Plan of Action and Ghana’s own Criminal Offences Act. Offensive or unpopular speech, no matter how uncomfortable, must be countered through dialogue and education, not imprisonment. “If we criminalise offence,” the commentary notes, “we will soon criminalise dissent.”
The same spirit animates the School’s proposals on privacy and confidentiality. While commending the intent to protect personal data and state secrets, the review warns that the Bill’s wording could criminalise whistle-blowing and investigative journalism. To strike balance, it introduces explicit public-interest and journalistic defences, harmonised with the Right to Information Act, ensuring that disclosures exposing corruption, illegality, or gross rights abuses remain protected when done proportionately.
A Blueprint for Rights-Sensitive Regulation
Beyond substance, the GIMPA Law School turns its sharpest focus to institutional design and due process. The proposed “Division” that will administer the law is placed under the National Communications Authority, with members appointed through executive discretion and bound by ministerial directives. This, the School warns, “erodes the independence essential for a credible information-governance framework.” Its alternative blueprint proposes an independent, multi-stakeholder authority including nominees from the Judicial Council, CHRAJ, the National Media Commission, academia, civil society, and industry, including a security of tenure and budgetary autonomy insulated from ministerial control.
Procedurally, the School recommends expanding response windows from two days to seven working days (72 hours for emergencies), guaranteeing the right to be heard, requiring disclosure of evidence, and mandating publication of all orders in a public online registry. Remedies should follow a hierarchy of restraint: correction as the default, removal only when strictly necessary, and access-blocking permitted solely by court order after a rigorous proportionality test. Account closures of media houses or political actors, it insists, have no place in a democracy unless tied to direct incitement to imminent violence.
On sanctions, the submission calls for the removal of custodial sentences for speech offences short of violent incitement, and for fines to be scaled proportionately to organisational turnover. Education and counter-speech programmes should replace punitive enforcement as the cornerstone of national resilience against misinformation.
The submission also critiques the Bill’s heavy compliance demands on online platforms and newsrooms. Mandatory algorithmic audits, risk assessments, and annual fact-checking certification, if applied across the board, could cripple small media outlets and start-ups. The School advocates a tiered system, reserving stringent duties for very large platforms and licensed national broadcasters, while encouraging co-regulation through the National Media Commission and Ghana Journalists Association codes. “We must not regulate innovation out of existence,” the review warns, “nor make truth a luxury of the well-resourced.”
Taken together, these proposals form a rights-centred roadmap for reconciling truth, accountability, and freedom in the digital era. They affirm that the state’s duty is not to decide what citizens may know, but to create conditions where citizens can discern truth for themselves through transparency, open dialogue, and independent institutions.
A New Trajectory for Digital Democracy
The GIMPA Law School’s submission is more than a critique; it is an act of civic leadership. It transforms the classroom into a policy laboratory, demonstrating how academic inquiry can directly shape national legislation. Students from the Law and Technology class, after weeks of study, simulation, and debate, helped craft amendments that bridge theory with public interest. Their work reflects the School’s broader philosophy, that law schools must not only teach the law but also help make it better.
In its conclusion, the Department reminds policymakers that the fight against misinformation cannot become a fight against citizens. Every society must protect itself from deliberate falsehoods and hateful propaganda, yet those protections lose legitimacy when they muzzle legitimate scrutiny, satire, and dissent. The submission thus calls for a decisive pivot: from punitive control to participatory governance, from censorship to accountability, and from fear of misinformation to the cultivation of public media literacy.
As the Ministry reviews inputs from across the country, the GIMPA Law School hopes that its research will change the trajectory of the Bill steering it away from executive overreach toward a balanced, rights-respecting framework. “Combating disinformation should not create a Ministry of Truth,” the submission asserts, “but a Republic of Reason.”
If Ghana gets this balance right, it will stand as a continental example proving that a democracy can defend truth without silencing freedom. In that outcome, both government and citizens win: the government gains trust, and the people retain their voice.
The writer:
Desmond Israel, Esq. is the Head of Department of Public Law and Governance at the Ghana Institute for Management and Public Administration Law School.
